Wide Repertory Invites Plenty of Meandering

MGMT Performs at Barclays Center

A handful of hit singles gives a band some leeway, and MGMT used all it has at Barclays Center on Friday. MGMT — led by the singer Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser, who both play guitars and keyboards — strategically doled out the three hits from its 2008 debut album, “Oracular Spectacular”: “Time to Pretend” early in the set and “Electric Feel” and “Kids” near the end, each one drawing arena-wide squeals of recognition.

In between, MGMT plunged into the musical and verbal convolutions that make up far more of the band’s repertory. While the hits lean toward 1970s pop, most of MGMT’s other songs put new twists into the already labyrinthine legacy of psychedelic pop. It’s not bait and switch; MGMT’s albums have always revealed its woolier side. But the band — which has been mostly touring theaters with 2,000 to 3,000 seats, not arenas like Barclays — now has two different constituencies: those who know the happy-sounding hits and those who are willing to follow the band’s more abstruse ambitions.

Photo

MGMT Andrew VanWyngarden, center, and his band mates summoned echoes of the Beach Boys and the Beatles, at Barclays Center.Credit
Brian Harkin for The New York Times

On its second album, “Congratulations” in 2010, MGMT stepped away from writing choruses and keyboard hooks, choosing instead to build songs as a string of verses — often two or three contrasting ones — with arrangements that grow more elaborate each time around, like a theme and variations. Mr. VanWyngarden’s lyrics turned gloomier and were particularly skeptical about success and materialism. “Mass adulation not so funny/Poisoned honey,” he shrieked at the end of “Flash Delirium,” the set’s opening song. “Congratulations” also included a 12-minute suite, “Siberian Breaks,” that tested the crowd’s attention before MGMT regained it with “Electric Feel.”

“MGMT,” the band’s 2013 album, kept its songs shorter and somewhat less meandering, with more obvious refrains. But those refrains can be bleak — like that of “Mystery Disease” — and MGMT still isn’t courting a mass market. It unearthed “Introspection,” the title song from a 1968 album of psychedelic pop that had become a collector’s item, “Introspection: A Faine Jade Recital.” And on Friday, it brought out Faine Jade himself to play guitar and sing along on it while much of the audience wondered who he was.

The band performed calmly and meticulously, offering more musicianship than showmanship as it summoned echoes of the late-1960s Beach Boys, early Pink Floyd, the Byrds, the Beatles and considerably more obscure ’60s artifacts. Bright colors rippled and flashed across the video screen overhead. And when MGMT got to “Kids,” its poppy and arty missions converged. The song’s perky keyboard line and lyrics hinting at environmental consciousness for a young generation — “Control yourself/Take only what you need from it” — had the whole arena singing along; then, using the momentum of the bass line, MGMT went into a one-chord jam full of layered rhythms from staccato keyboards, hypnotic and propulsive in the zone where kraut-rock and disco overlap. It was something for everyone in the arena.

A version of this review appears in print on December 16, 2013, on Page C2 of the New York edition with the headline: Wide Repertory Invites Plenty of Meandering. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe